The sound of snapping fingers tears holes in the sky. Now it's Bella's turn to throw her hands over her ears, whimpering inaudibly from the pain. One, two, three times the booming echoes rattle against her bones and threaten to drive her to her knees. By the fourth, she feels a tiny trickle of warm fluid leak out from between her fingers. And still, she doesn't close her nerves in defense and dull her hearing. It's too important that she not miss a word. It stops. She lifts her hands cautiously off her head, and for the umpteenth time today forces herself to swallow the acrid burn of her own fear mixed in with the day's meals. Her entire body is trembling, every muscle overwhelmed to the point of uselessness. Her eye flickers toward Beljani, still dressed perfectly for any ball she could wish for in her blood speckled dress. Her vision trembles, too. What is the expression on that face? Animals can't read people. There is only fear. She turns her head to look at Redana, instead. Redana with her long shadow. Redana with her legs that will not stand. Redana with her beautiful eyes. Redana, the little girl who lifted her out of the Box. Redana, lying in bed with a fever that couldn't be treated any of the gentle, stupid skills of a silly kitten or even a fancy Imperial physician. Redana, who can only get better through the power of her own determination. Redana, who makes Bella watch her arch that tiny spine in agony while tears stream endlessly from that one pretty eye she's still got left. Redana, who can only be soothed by one power in the entire universe, which are lullabies sung soft and sweet for hours without stopping. But the songs are all forgotten. Little girls, good girls know lullabies. Monsters only know one verse, and it's not fit for company. Bella's feet slide forward, away from the edge of the roof at last. Her heels bite into the hard stone. She is balanced on a knife's edge, moments away from exploding with the power of a star or collapsing into a trembling heap forever with equal likelihood. In slow, unsteady waves they come. Bella squeezes her eyes shut, as if her trembling lids were enough to keep them safe from the perfect plans of Beautiful. The first to touch her is a Kaeri warrior. Bella's body turns into a blur before the fingers finish closing. Even violet eyes might strain to see what produces the cloud of dust and the sickening crunch that precedes it. But when it clears, she is hunched over the Kaeri's limp body with her fingers clamped tight about her skull, squeezing tight enough to crack it. She snarls with wet, naked animosity and whirls herself back to standing like a tornado, heaving the body into a crowd that topples and scatters depending on her luck. She doesn't care which. ELF lightning bursts across her back and churns the new arena with shards of deadly masonry. Lantern, Kaeri, Azura all. If they approach, she crushes them. Cuts them. Hurls them aside, indiscriminately. She rushes forward through rounds of foul smelling, deafening SP fire and thickets full of lethal spears and knives and teeth. In a mass, they push her back with the unfocused strength of the oceans she used to read about in the stories she secretly carried off to her little bed to better learn their secrets, back during another, better life she used to have. "Beautiful!" she screams, and is startled to discover she has a voice after all, "Beautiful! NO!" There is an army swarming her, and she barely bothers to look. Her eyes are needed to watch her precious friend, and the terrifying arm hanging in the skies above her. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of new cuts and bruises being left across her body each time she is repelled. Superficial scratches, the lot of them. She pays them no attention. She can hardly feel them at all, beyond the vague disinterested awareness that some unpleasant thing has touched her. The only reason it's enough to force her back at all is the frantic pounding of her heart pushing power through her body in jagged spikes and painful pressure. That stubborn, stupid heart that screams at her to stay alive. And fuck her, damn her forever, she listens to it. Beljani's mob is a wall she cannot cross. Her stupid, stubborn heart sings with the voice she can't remember. Triumph and hope for... something. "Beljani!" she tries the final name, after the other two have failed her, "What the fuck are you doing, Beljani? She's gone, can't you see it? She's gone, she's... she's going, LET ME THROUGH! I have to! I can save her! Just! Let! Me! You! Bitch!!" If her attacks are deathblows or little better than playfighting she does not bother to see. It's not important. It doesn't matter which way the knife has turned. It doesn't matter if she's the burning culmination of a lifetime's worth of training and brutal lessons, or just the shadow of whatever bits of strength Thellis Thist has left for her. There is a wall in front of her, as slick and unyielding as the one that guarded the Ceronian Queen inside the Eater of Worlds. Her claws are still sharp. Her talons still glint in the eerie light of the open sky. Let her sink them in. Let her climb! If Redana is watching, she doesn't see. There's no time left to look behind her. Save Beautiful, stay alive, and the other shadowy yearning she can't name. They all call her heart to beat. Her legs to stand. Her eyes and claws to point forward. She burns. She trembles. Fuck it. A mirage is plenty for these useless dipshits. She surges forward and slides back in an endless, stupid dance that covers her in tiny wounds and makes her hands itch for a sword. Animals aren't allowed to have tools. Monsters can't save anybody. A hero could manage both, but the only one she's seen is dead. A new one then, fuck it. Fuck you, why can't it be her? If Redana is watching, she doesn't want to know. Her dance is ugly. Awful. Stupid. She'll never be loved again. She howls and surges forward again. And again she fails. Again. Again! Her body trembles again, this time with wet, pathetic sobs. And she charges straight into the wall again, failure that she is. All around her, the building groans with the pain of enduring her battle. It shudders beneath hundreds of feet. It begs for death. Bella burns, and charges again. It's the only hero's act she's fit to play. [Alone Against the World: [b]11[/b]. Bella keeps everyone busy, and she'll do damage when she's done]